Nitroarenes are one of the most important organic compounds that are utilized in industrial and agricultural applications as intermediates in the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals, pesticides, pigments, dyes, and rubber chemicals. However, nitroarenes have many harmful health impacts, such as skin and eye irritation due to direct contact with nitroarenes. Also, nitro-anion radicals generated from nitroarenes have mutagenic effects on animals and humans.
Conventional approaches for decontamination of nitroarenes are based on using sodium borohydride (NaBH4) as a reducing agent along with external agitation to accelerate the decontamination process. However, using NaBH4 for reducing nitroarenes have several shortcomings, such as high toxicity, instability, and releasing unwanted toxic waste. In order to overcome the shortcomings of NaBH4 and for efficiently reducing the nitroarenes pollutions, different nanomaterial such as nanomotors have been introduced which may be propelled due to a chemical reaction by different mechanisms, such as self-electrophoresis, self-acoustophoresis, self-thermophoresis, and bubble-propulsion. Therefore, these nanomotors may eliminate a need for external agitation and accelerate the decontamination process.
Hence, there is a need for a safe, simple, and cost-effective method for reducing nitroarenes of wastewater to aminoarenes with high efficiency and without any need for external agitation and negating the needs to use NaBH4 as the reducing agent. Moreover, there is a need for an efficient nanomotor for decontamination of nitroarenes without any toxicity.